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PAGE 4 GEORGIA BULLETIN BOOK SUPPLEMENT
The World’s Implacable Enemy-Hunger
THE GREAT HUNGER BY
Cecil Woodham-Smith Harper
and Row: $6.95
THE RICH NATIONS AND
THE POOR NATIONS by
Barbars Ward Norton: $3.75
BY ALICE ELLEN MAYHEW
Hunger has always been one
of man’s most implacable ene
mies. Today, after the scienti
fic and technological revolution
of the last century, still, more
than half the people of the world
go hungry. Most of these people
live in the underdeveloped, ex
colonies, primitive societies I
of Asia and Africa, and Latin
America; (there are more
kinds than one of “hunger,” of
course, as Mr. Michael Harr
ington pointed out in, The Other
America, and one quarter of our
own population is seriously
substandard). We are, in fact,
just starting to attack hunger
and poverty with any kind of
organization and yet, in spite
of the massive aid of the last
two decades, the gap between
the rich and the poor nations
is actually increasing.
ONE OF the most horrifying
hungers in history occurred in
Ireland in the 1840's; suc
cessive famines and plagues
were precipitated by a blight on
the potato, in a land where the
tenant farmers grew grain to
pay their rents, and lived ex
clusively on potatoes and a little
milk. Before 1845, Ireland was
a hostile, backward, incredi
bly wretched country, exploited
by absentee landlords — two
and a half millions starved
"more or less” every year.
By 1851, she had lost over a
third of her population — a
million and a half dead of hun
ger, fever, cholera and another
million emmigrated across the
Atlantic and the Channel in tran
sports known in Irish tradition
as, "coffin ships,” so many
died on the way.
MRS. WOODHAM-SMITH’s
scholarly account of these years
of horror is a grim master
piece, so vivid that the Irish
author Sean O'Faolain spoke
of, how, reading it, bitter
memories awakened that had
long been quiet. “Than, to one's
horror, it all comes welling
up again, atavistically, in such
gushes of black rage and hot
tears that one has to lay down
the book at every third orfour-
th page to control oneself.”
And, an Irish Famine Song, of
the times, goes:
How long
has it been
since your mind
was stretched
by a new idea?
a challenging question
from Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins
Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote: ‘A man’s mind
stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original
dimensions.’ The truth of this statement cannot, of
course, be denied. A child who suddenlyTealizes that the
letters in the alphabet are not just isolated sounds and
shapes, but meaningful symbols that form words, has
grasped an idea that will lead to a continuing expansion
of his mind. There comes a time, tliough, in the lives of
too many of us when our minds become occupied only
with knowledge we have already learned. When that hap
pens our minds cease to grow.
“If you would like to stretch your mind with some new
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“Oh, we’re down Into the dust,
over here, over here,
Oh, we’re down into the dust
but the Lord in Whom we trust
Will repay us crumb for crust,
over here, over here.”
And another, ’’....the day will
come when vengeance loud will
caU.”
But vengeance against whom?
Ireland had been joined to Eng
land in 1801 by the Act of
Union. She had not the freedom
nor the means to help herself
and, when the blight struck in
1845, she depended on England
to survive. One author accused
England of genocide (deliberate
mass murder). England, how
ever, behaved at first with
remarkable generosity (espe
cially for those times) ——
though with little understanding
of the scope and dangers of the
catastrophe. Later, she threw
up her hands and let things
run their murderous course.
It’s hard to find anything good
to say about the landlords, with
a very few exceptions; they
continued to draw their rents
and used, in some cases, re
lief money to pack starving,
sick, naked peasants onto boats
.for exportation. (There were
some cases of remarkable ge
nerosity: the Quakers of
England, many private English
and American persons.)
THE REAL villain was 19th-
century laissez-faire (hands-
off) economics. Mr. Trevelyan,
the Englishman in charge of the
Irish situation, and Secretary of
Treasury Wood, were more
concerned with the rights of
merchants to make profits and
more frightened of spoiling the
Irish people with government
hand-outs, then they were with
saving lives. Mrs. Woodham-
Smith sums upthe government’s
policy: “In the otficial view,
the famine in Ireland offered
traders an opportunity to make
profits, of which it would be
unjust to deprive them...” This
is why all the government's
measures were half-hearted
and doomed to failure. England
initiated public works, then
dropped them. She called upon
local tax payers to support their
townspeople, but instituted no
land reforms. Provision of food
was left to private enterprise.
Food was allowed out of Ire
land while a million Irish corp
ses lay strewn over the hills
and hovels where they dropped.
When food was finally brought
in , nobody had the few pence
left to pay for it. And at the
height of it, Mr. Trevelyan went
so far as to say that, “the great
evils with which we have to
contend is not the physical evil
of the famine, but the moral
evil of the selfish, perverse,
turbulent character of the
people.”
MRS. WOODHAM- SMITH
quotes an English scholar of
those times who said that, “I
have always felt a certain hor
ror of political economists
since I heard one of them say
that he feared the famine of
1848 would not kill more than
a million people, and that would
scarcely be enough to do much
good.” I wish he could have
read, as I did, after hearing
that statement, another English
economist, Barbara Ward. In
The Rich Nations and the Poor
Nations, in simple layman's
language, she has provided a
cogent, practical, Christian ex
planation of why the world is
divided into haves and have-
nots, and how we can help
poor nations to help themselves.
We do have the resources. And
Miss Ward, echoing the great
encyclicals of Pope John XXIII,
asks, "Do we not betray our
faith when we see men in servi
tude to poverty, ill health, sta
rvation when we have the means
to help?’*
We live in a revolutionary
age: revolutions of equality of
men and nations; of progress
and the possibility of material
change; of biology — longer
lives ami rampaging birth rates;
and of science and the appli
cation of capital to all the eco
nomic processes of life. These
revolutions started in the West
and were carried to other parts
of the globe by Western colon
izers, traders, exploiters, edu
cators. Another Western re
volution, Communism, pretends
to have the synthesis of all these
revolutions: it promises short
cuts and immediate results to
nations desperate to catch up
and to relieve their people. It
would also deprive them of their
freedom.
THE QUESTION is, can the
West, with its tradition of de
mocracy compete with com
munism, in offering help and
possible solutions to these nat
ions? Miss Ward thinks yes,
but only by a sustained and
imaginative effort, by a daring
strategy which will enable them
to achieve the initial economic
thrust (achieved centuries ago
in the West while it was still
relatively underpopulated), and
only if the scale of aid is the
West whole it was still relat-
only if the scale of aid is
adequate. India and Pakistan,
just to cite two instances, have
made huge progress by cour
age, sacrifice, and determin
ation. If we succeed in help
ing this subcontinent, we save
Southeastern Asia from sure
Communist domination, and we
will see half the people in the
undeveloped world on their way
to the modern world. She sug
gests a revival of the Marshall
Plan spirit; and that other Wes
tern nations, now recovered
from the war, match America's
generosity by relegating 1 per
cent of their national incomes
to foreign assistance programs.
TO THOSE of us who gripe
about our taxes, and who does
not?, Miss Ward proposes the
rewards, both spiritual and
material (increased markets,
for instance), that we may ex
pect from a more balanced di
stir bution of wealth.
As Christians, again follow
ing Pope John, we wish for
open societies in an open world.
The great Catholic philosopher,
Jacques Martain, stated the
principle: “An organization of
liberties is unthinkable apart
from the moral realities of
justice and civil amity, which,
on the natural and temporal pla-
nce, correspond to what the
Gospel calls brotherly love on
the spiritual and supernatural
plane.”
CONSUELA BRIGHT
Moving
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3
rist in his life and dying left
behind a secret I pamphlets,
“Christ the Messiah”; “Ch
ristianity: Judaism Fulfilled.”
The writing is all so good,
the people so alive and warm
that it is a moving experience
to read this novel. They speak,
think and act in a way so right,
so revealing of themselves that
the reader is genuinely in their
midst, no outsider, but partic
ipating with them in their lives.
It is, however, more than a good
tale well told, it is an account
ing of the search, an assert
ion that life's deepest meaning
is spiritual.
Consuela’s own search ended
in a convent. Her dying mother’s
blessing to her was, “When we
were children (her mother)
murmured after a while, 'a-
lways the seats in the syna-
Novel
gogue by the eastern wall went
to the high people, those with
Rabbis for sons, for instance.
So you no what I think Sulie?
I think maybe papa and me will
get seats by the eastern wall
in Heaven. Why not? After all,
lots of Jews there will be with
a Rabbi a son, but how many
with a daughter a nun?"
This beautifully written novel
will have wide readership and
perhaps will send the readers
off to catch up with three other
Cornelia Jessey novels as well.
EVELYN KINGSLEY
McCOY, JOSEPH A. Advice
From The Field. (Helicon.
$4.95). A volume on the theory
of missions with a preface by
Father Frederick A. McGuire,
C. M., executive secretary,
Mission Secretariat.